The Dish

Boots On The Ground … For Ebola

Today, president Obama is announcing a major effort to help stem the spread of the outbreak in West Africa, relying primarily on our African military command:

The unprecedented response will include the deployment of 3,000 U.S. military forces and more than $500 million in defense spending drawn from funding normally used for efforts like the war in Afghanistan, senior administration officials outlined Monday. Obama has called America’s response to the disease a “national-security priority,” with top foreign policy and defense officials leading the government’s efforts.

The officials said Obama believes that in order to best contain the disease, the U.S. must “lead” the global response effort. In the CDC’s largest deployment in response to an epidemic, more than 100 officials from the agency are currently on the ground and $175 million has been allocated to West Africa to help combat the spread of Ebola. Those efforts will be expanded with the assistance of U.S. Africa Command, which will deploy logistics, command and control, medical, and engineering resources to affected countries.

Peter Grier explains why the Pentagon is leading this mission:

The short answer is because it is the largest and most capable US organization available for emergency action, and has money to pay for the effort. The military’s extensive airlift and health-care infrastructure can quickly plug holes in the current international fight to try and contain the Ebola outbreak. US personnel should be flowing into the area in force in about two weeks, according to the White House. … Plus, the administration has now decided it’s time to move fast. If anything, it is past time. Cases are increasing at an exponential case. UN officials on Tuesday estimated that the world will need to commit upward of $1 billion to contain the crisis.

But Hayes Brown notes that other government agencies are involved as well:

Though the main takeaway from the White House’s announcement is the AFRICOM deployment, it won’t just be the military responding to the crisis. The U.S. government will also continue its quest to find doctors willing to travel to West Africa to help tackle the crisis. The U.S. Agency for International Development has for several weeks now had on its website an appeal “to the medical community in the United States for assistance with the West Africa Ebola Outbreak,” imploring qualified medical professionals to contact organizations working in the region through the Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI).

A sizable amount of funding is also being redirected to facilitate the new initiatives being launched in not just the Pentagon and USAID, but also the State Department, Centers for Disease Control, Department of Health and Human Services and other government agencies. The administration is asking Congress to provide another $30 million to send CDC workers and equipment to the region and $58 million to help develop an effective Ebola vaccine.

Adam Taylor provides a wrap-up of what other countries are doing to help fight the epidemic. Meanwhile, Rachael Rettner pushes back on Michael Osterholm’s fears that the virus could mutate and become airborne, which would raise infection rates catastrophically:

Although it’s theoretically possible that Ebola could become airborne, “it’s pretty unlikely,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Pittsburgh. “Airborne transmission may be what we fear the most, but evolutionarily speaking, it may not be the best path for the virus to take,” Adalja said. The Ebola virus does mutate, or change its genetic material,, fairly frequently, but this does not necessarily mean it can become airborne, Adalja said. The HIV virus has a high rate of mutation as well, but it has not acquired the ability to spread through the air, Adalja said. In fact, none of the 23 viruses that cause serious disease in humans have been known to mutate in a way that changed their mode of infection, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former deputy commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration, who recently wrote about the topic in Forbes.

The Perfect Political Storms In Britain

The Economist explains how the Scottish National Party (SNP) came to power in Scotland:

The disadvantage of first-past-the-post systems … is that by raising the threshold of parliamentary dominance, they contain the possibility of sudden, violent shifts in political power in the event of individual parties crossing that threshold. Despite its conservative electorate, SNP had espoused a centre-left creed since the 1970s. With Labour in government during the 2000s, it began to win over working-class voters, but had to compete for them with the Liberal Democrats. The 2011 Scottish election, however, was a perfect storm: blue-collar voters disillusioned with Labour, a Labour leadership complacent after decades of dominance in Scotland, the Liberal Democrats now in government and suddenly unpopular. The SNP obtained a good (37%) increase in vote-share but a spectacular increase (152%) in seat-share on the constituency list. It could form a majority government and set about making plans for the referendum.

And, if the referendum succeeds, it will throw off the normal balance of power in the rest of Britain. Many political analysts have predicted, given Scotland’s liberal bent, that the Tories will benefit (after Cameron is forced to quit, I suppose). Elaine Teng is skeptical:

Even if David Cameron managed to stay at the head of the Conservative Party, 2015 is surely Labour’s year, in part because Scottish voters will participate in that general election regardless of the result of the referendum. The actual separation of the Union—were it to occur—would be scheduled for March 2016, so the Scottish MPs would be elected as usual in May, take their seats in Parliament, and then leave in the spring of 2016, when their positions are abolished. Scotland’s participation all but seals the deal for Labour.

But what about after Scotland officially leaves? The Tories still wouldn’t have a guaranteed majority. True, Labour would lose 41 seats that they have been all but guaranteed; the Tories would lose only one. But the Tories have an additional factor working against them: United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip), the far-right, anti-European Union, anti-immigration party that has surged to prominence in the past few years is already beginning to split the Tory vote. A Guardian analysis of 2013 local elections showed that in many districts, Ukip took enough votes away from the Tories to ensure that other parties won. And that wasn’t an isolated incident:A YouGov study showed that the Tories are losing six times more voters to Ukip than Labour, who are also gaining seats from the struggling Lib-Dems.

This is true, as far as it goes. But an independent England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be far more favorable territory for the Tories in the long run. It would be like removing Texas from the electoral map – giving the Democrats a new, structural edge. But the forces that have led to a possible Scottish secession have also led to the same feeling in England. Why should the English not determine their own future as well – instead of being bossed around by Brussels? Its possible England, post-secession, could withdraw from the EU – especially with its bigger conservative share of the vote – while Scotland tries to negotiate a way to stay. As I said: fascinating.

Malkin Award Nominee

“This is all because, I mean, count the number of times he uses the word I in any speech, and compare that to any other president. Remember when he announced the killing of bin Laden? That speech I believe had 29 references to I – on my command, I ordered, as commander-in-chief, I was then told, I this. You’d think he’d pulled the trigger out there in Abbottabad. You know, this is a guy, you look at every one of his speeches, even the way he introduces high officials – I’d like to introduce my secretary of State. He once referred to ‘my intelligence community’. And in one speech, I no longer remember it, ‘my military’. For God’s sake, he talks like the emperor, Napoleon,” – Charles Krauthammer, psycho-analyzing the president.

Pity he is factually, demonstrably wrong. Meanwhile, one comes across this statement from George Will that we excerpted earlier today:

Building on the work of the first Roosevelt, the second Roosevelt gave us the idea, the shimmering, glittering idea of the heroic presidency. And with it the hope that complex problems would yield to charisma. This sets the country up for perpetual disappointment.

And what, one wonders, was the cult of Reagan all about if not a “heroic presidency”? And who, one wonders, was more of an advocate for it than Will?

(For a glossary of the Dish Awards, including the Malkin Award, click here.)

Francis On Tying and Untying The Knots

This fall, we’ll begin to see the impact of the new bishop of Rome on the church with the opening of the October Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, focusing on the family and evangelizing in the modern world. There isn’t much chance of a change in doctrine on many of these issues – the ban on divorced Catholics re-marrying in church and receiving communion, the disapproval of cohabitation before marriage, the ban on contraception, and certainly the aversion to same-sex commitment and love. But Francis has already shown that he is prepared to take a non-linear approach to these questions – and he keeps surprising.

What Francis seems to be saying is that in all these questions, while the doctrine will not change, the call to mercy should be paramount. In other words, in individual cases, the decision to marry a couple who have been living together or have experienced one or more divorces should be left to a merciful pastor, not a rigid and distant dogma. How to get this point across? As so often, Francis uses his own actions, rather than words:

The Holy Father presided over the wedding of 20 couples Sunday in St. Peter’s Basilica. From a distance, the group seemed fairly typical: the couples ranged from ages 25 to 56 and were all from the Diocese of Rome. But the underlying storyline is far more telling: one bride was already a mother, some of the couples had already been living together, and others had previously been married.

This is what our beloved Joe Biden would call a BFD. Priests who might have married similar couples in the past could be subject to discipline from Rome. Now, the bishop of Rome himself is presiding over them. Elizabeth Dias explains why this matters:

Since local churches currently tend to make their own decisions about serving communion to divorced and remarried, or cohabitating Catholics, any overarching guidance from the Holy Father this October could mean significant change. Cohabiting couples cannot be denied marriage by policy in the Catholic Church, but a priest is not obliged to marry a couple, and so Pope Francis’ example of presiding over a wedding for couples who had lived together will likely encourage other priests to follow suit.

Is the Holy Father subverting formerly rigid teachings? I don’t really think so. His restatement of the core Catholic understanding of the sacrament of marriage – that its core is the uniting of a man and a woman – is pretty substantive and full-throated:

“This is what marriage is all about: man and woman walking together, wherein the husband helps his wife to become ever more a woman, and wherein the woman has the task of helping her husband to become ever more a man. Here we see the reciprocity of differences.”

Well, that should finally alienate America’s blank slate progressives. What I think is going on here is simple sensitivity to the individual person and a particular situation – think of Jesus and the woman about to be stoned for adultery – and Francis regards mercy and forgiveness as the core Christian virtue. To show no mercy in today’s world is to consign countless people to a life outside the church altogether, when they may sincerely be attempting to live out the Gospels in an imperfect world with flawed human nature. If that is the case, then you can almost hear Francis’ response: “Who am I to judge?”

Know hope.

(Photo: Brides attend the Sunday Mass held by Pope Francis at the St. Peter’s Basilica on September 14, 2014 in Vatican City, Vatican. During the Mass Pontiff celebrated the marriage of twenty couples. By Giulio Origlia/Getty Images)

Dissents Of The Day II

The in-tray has been brimming with backlash over my criticism of the president on Iraq. I’m glad to air it – and it’s made me think hard about it again. And this email stung a little – but made me laugh:

[The above] commercial popped into my head after reading you on Obama, and I thought to myself, “I swear it’s Andrew, bless his hysterical heart.”

First big round of dissent here. Another:

I share every one of your concerns regarding Obama‘s initiative against ISIS, and yet there is a word in my thoughts that you, as far as I am aware, haven’t mentioned and that president Obama mentioned only once in his speech and in a passing way: genocide.

By both word and deed, ISIS has unequivocally declared its intent to exterminate any and all non-Sunni (and eventually non-Salafist) persons that it can. ISIS has clearly shown itself committed to a level of atrocity far above any usual sectarian blood-letting. They may well have the capacity to kill in numbers that rival Rwanda, perhaps even the Nazis. This thought disrupts my inclination to stand back. Don’t we suffer remorse over past genocides we failed to act against? Can we do much to stop this one? Probably not. Does that take away the moral burden to try? Probably not.

Another quotes me:

That simple lesson is as follows: American military force to pummel Jihadists from the skies can create as much terror as it foils. Our intervention can actually backfire and make us all less safe. How many Jihadists, for example, did the Iraq War create? Our intervention gave al Qaeda a foothold in Iraq and then, by creating a majority Shi’a state for the first time, helped spawn Sunni support for the Caliphate.

It’s not fair to compare an invasion, followed by nearly a decade of occupation and so-called “nation-building,” to the air campaign and soldier training that Obama is waging against ISIS. For one thing, there’s a great deal of support from Arab nations in the region and moderate Muslims around the world. Yes, we’re doing their dirty work, to some extent. But because that work doesn’t entail our soldiers traipsing through their streets – and since they’ve asked for our help, it’s a totally different dynamic.

In short, we’re the good guys to moderate Muslims who are repulsed by ISIS. As for the extremists who like ISIS, well … we’re never going to win them over anyway, and maybe a show of force will have a deterrent effect on their enthusiasm for ISIS propaganda.

This issue is much too serious to play the strawman game where you ridicule the notion of this kind of intervention eradicating extremism. However strong the president’s language was last week, no one actually thinks this is the cure for Sunni-based violent extremism. It’s merely a way to prevent genocide, empower moderates in the region, and, over the long-term, advance the idea that we aren’t driven entirely by oil interests and imperialism.

And you’re right that it probably won’t be an unqualified success, but one thing I respect about this administration, which I thought you respected as well, is that it takes on issues where the likelihood of complete victory is remote, because they know that any progress is better than doing nothing. It was true with the stimulus. It was true with health care reform. It was true with gay marriage. And it’s true in Iraq.

I take our reader’s point. I would cavil with the idea that “we’re the good guys to moderate Muslims who are repulsed by ISIS”. We have no evidence of that. We have a hell of a lot of evidence that our interventions – especially bombing Sunni areas from the skies – can backfire and alienate the very people we are trying to support. And the idea that, at this point, Iraqis view the US as anything other than a blight on what was once their country seems too naive for me. Another reader:

Were you opposed to Obama‘s campaign to degrade and defeat al-Qaeda’s leadership? No; you kind of liked it. Although Islamic State is apparently not actively targeting the U.S. at this very moment, I see no difference between IS and al-Qaeda in terms of their long-term threat to the Homeland. I think we would be negligent to let them grow in strength unchallenged. The job to degrade them is incredibly difficult and we may fail. We may make it worse if we kill too many civilians again. But I don’t believe ISIS will go away or change their plans if we ignore them. I don’t believe that they will be grateful if we leave them alone to commit genocide or enslavement. Obama could have punted on ISIS, but he didn’t. He is taking seriously and doing the best he can.

Obama is not stupid or craven or cynical or excessively politically motivated. I think he is sad and tired. His vision of humanity and historical progress has taken a beating. The Arab Spring turned out to be pretty disappointing. There are tens of thousands of young Muslim men in ISIS that are objectively evil and inhumanly cruel to innocent and helpless fellow human beings. It is hard not to get depressed about human nature. He is being forced to cough up his legacy of disengagement in Iraq.

The Ferguson incident has revealed that race relations remain fraught in this country despite his attempts to transcend the prejudice and hatred. Both blacks and whites blame him for not doing the right thing (whatever that is). Hispanics think that he is a traitor for delaying on immigration reform. Meanwhile, his approval rating is in the toilet, the Senate is likely to fall to the Republicans, and his last two years may be completely stymied. His supporters have fled. This is the reward he gets for being cool-headed, thoughtful, rational, measured, and brave. Almost everything going wrong is not his fault. Of course he makes a few mistakes now and then, like getting photographed golfing at the wrong time or wearing the wrong suit or saying he isn’t done yet making a strategy. If I were him I would feel mighty, mighty unappreciated.

Andrew, you were the one who could envision the potential of Obama and explain it to the world. That is how I became a reader of your blog in December 2007. You need to try to get back into his head and appreciate what he is up against and why Obama still matters. I still trust him more than anybody I can think of to be leading our country.

One more:

I am an Obama voter, a Dish subscriber, and generally find your take on national and world events well reasoned, thoughtful, and principled. But when it comes to your position on US military action against ISIS, you seem to be over-compensating for your past mistake in supporting the Iraq war.

I am certainly no psychologist (I am an attorney), but I think it is fair to say that you carry tremendous guilt for supporting the Iraq war (I mean, you dedicated an entire Deep Dish e-book to how wrong you were and how awful you feel about it). Certainly, much of America is war weary – rightfully so – but your skepticism and doom-and-gloom take in particular seems to carry more guilt than your typical rational and reasoned analysis.

For what it’s worth, I was against the Iraq war before it become the mainstream popular opinion. I have a pretty good BS-meter, and I knew the pretense for a war in Iraq was a farce from the get-go. It was, and remains, an utter catastrophe. The untold human, financial, and political cost will not truly be known for decades. But you know what? I support this latest fight against ISIS.

Imagine being the President of the United States, Andrew. Even though you campaigned on ending “dumb” wars, and drew down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, your absolute, number one constitutional priority as president and commander-in-chief remains: the safety and security of the American people. A large group of well-funded and trained terrorists have taken over swaths of land in the Middle East, brutally maiming and killing innocent civilians along the way. They have publicly declared their intention to attack the US. In essence, they have declared war on America. While they are not large enough, nor capable enough, to actually carry out such an attack at this time, they are only growing, receiving more money, and training more fighters.

As president of the most powerful nation on earth, you have quite a number of options, but they basically boil down to two: You can either take military action or not. I am sorry to be the one to break this to you, Andrew, but there is no president, current, past, or future, that would ever sit back and let such a threat grow to the point of carrying out an attack on America. Certainly not in the post-9/11 world we live in. And you know what? That’s how someone in charge of our security should act. It is the responsible thing to do.

You want to be a violent terrorist organization and declare war on America? Well, now your going to have deal with those consequences. You’re going to be extinguished. And if ISIS is systematically degraded and destroyed, particularly with support from allies and Middle East partners, that will be the right message. The United States, and the world, will have zero-tolerance for this. Zero. Fucking. Tolerance.

The President did not try and BS us by hyping the immediate threat to the homeland; he told us a reality that a war-weary America did not want to hear: that this is the approach you have take with violent fanatics. It is an unfortunate reality that we have to respond to violence with violence, but this is the world we live in. Perhaps there will be a paradigm shift someday when I’m old and grey, and that won’t be the case anymore, but in the meantime, I support this president to uphold his constitutional duty – dealing with these violent fanatics who will never be part of the civilized world the only way they should be dealt with: extermination.

Update from a reader, who notes something that can’t be reiterated enough:

Your reader who wrote this is completely wrong:

Imagine being the President of the United States, Andrew. Even though you campaigned on ending “dumb” wars, and drew down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, your absolute, number one constitutional priority as president and commander-in-chief remains: the safety and security of the American people.

The presidential oath states:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

His number one priority is not the safety of Americans; it’s to uphold the Constitution. And the last time I checked, that means letting Congress declare war.

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #222

VFYWC_222

A reader writes:

Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD. If I’m right, my self-esteem will be temporarily bolstered.

Camden Yards actually wasn’t too far off. Another reader:

Looks like Harbor Yard, home of the Bridgeport Bluefish in Bridgeport, CT. It’s a great place to watch a ball game. Even if it’s wrong, it’s good to support the ‘fish.

Bridgeport was the most popular incorrect guess this week. Another reader rightly gets us to the Midwest:

I’m gonna say this is the Akron Aeros’ ballpark in Akron, Ohio, from a skybox in the left field area. I’ve been to a couple of Aeros games, which is a big deal because 1) I live 9 hours’ drive away; 2) the first time I went, a visiting player gave me his bat after the game; and 3) the second time I went, there was an earthquake in Akron. Yes, in Akron. The next night, in Toledo, Ohio, a tornado zipped through the parking lot of my hotel. (I think Ohio was trying to tell me something.)

Another throws up his hands:

I give up! I have spent far too much time on your addictive contest. Thought it might be Scottsdale Stadium in Scottsdale, AZ. People can sit on the grass and watch there. Logo might be from Seattle team. Might also be Ameritrade Stadium in Omaha where College World Series is held. Or old Rosenblatt Stadium there. What stymies me is that long covered structure through which something is transported to top of the building like a grain elevator. That might make it in Minneapolis or St Paul. Found one picture of a tobacco transporter in the south but wasn’t quite right landscape.

Another was less discouraged:

I didn’t think it was possible for me to guess two windows in a row correctly. Okay, technically I’m not sure if last week’s window was the exact window, but I got the right building and that’s a win. But two easy windows in a row? Do you want all your readers to get out and enjoy the fall weather instead of hacking away for hours, yelling at the computer, sweating it because they can’t find anything in the picture?? Well, I for one, thank you.

With more than 500 entries, this contest was even more popular than last week’s. Another reader savors the correct city:

I love the smell of napalm in the morning – it smells like … Victory Field in Indianapolis!

An expert is even more excited:

I was sooo excited when I saw the contest photo. A minor league baseball stadium?? That’s my niche! I’ve visited dozens of stadiums at all professional levels. I take trips every summer to see new cities and new teams, taking extensive notes about the games I see: the food, the architecture, the people, the uniforms. It is a great way to see the country, as it gives me excuses to go to places I wouldn’t otherwise have reason to visit. I’ve seen baseball in Buffalo, Chattanooga, Rancho Cucamonga, and everywhere in between. I saw this photo and thought this week will be tailor made for me. I’ll pick up on some nuance of the shape of the tier, or the location of the lawn, and I’ll be so proud of my baseball detective skills. I will be the only winner!

That feeling lasted a few seconds, until I saw the flag. Oh. Indianapolis. Everyone is going to get this one. Fuck. You’re a tease.

Another explains:

2014 has been a year of highs and lows for me on the VFYW contest. So close on some, even joining the scrum on a few correct windows; and so far on others (identifying the location by yellow lichen? Seriously?) So imagine my happiness at seeing this VFYW contest. A baseball stadium! I’m a baseball fan, I’ve been to lots of stadiums, including minor league stadiums, which this clearly is. How hard can this be? Wait a minute … I’ve never been to this stadium …

After plenty of searches for urban baseball stadiums near power plants and finding nothing, I switched tactics. Not quite as obscure as yellow lichen, I found the flag. The flag of the city of Indianapolis.

Based on the level of the field and the position of the side walk pillar in the contest photo, I’d say the photo was taken at the JW Marriott Indianapolis. The photo is from the second floor convention area, from the prefunction area (so-called by the hotel’s website):

Indeed, it was the pre-function area. Another notes:

So is “Pre-function” the charming Midwestern attempt at classing up “Reception” or something? Speaking of those wholesome Indianans, in this particular VFYW search I came across this little gem of a TripAdvisor review: “Hospitality service & staff were alarmingly friendly and troublingly attentive. Or maybe as a Bostonian I’m just not used to people being nice.”

Another reader reconstructed the Indianapolis city flag in an image editor, then reverse-image searched his way to success. Here’s somebody looking to make up for last week:

After misreading “Zane’s” as “Zone’s” and thus becoming an ignominious member of the 2.1% who didn’t get the window last week, I was determined not to miss what at first glance looks to be a slam dunk: somewhere in a decent sized US city with a minor league (most likely AAA) baseball park. There’s even a flag RIGHT THERE that should be a pretty big clue as to location. And it is: the blue field with a white cross, overlaid with a white star in a red circle at the center is the flag of the city of Indianapolis, Indiana. That was surprisingly difficult to discover (I took a few detours through the county and municipal flags of Texas first, many of which feature a “lone” star) but I imagine you have no shortage of people from Indy that will recognize it on sight, in addition to the legions of highly competent Google sleuths that regularly populate these contests.

The view is from a building just off left-center field at Victory Field, home of the Indianapolis Indians, which claims to be “The Best Minor League Ballpark in America” (a claim with which, as a proud resident of Durham, NC, I am inclined to disagree.) Specifically, somewhere in the JW Marriott across Maryland Street, among the floor-to-ceiling windows (you can see the American flag from the ballpark reflected in the attached screen grab.) Based on the interactive floor plan on the hotel’s website, this window appears to be in the “Prefunction” area of the third floor, just outside the JW Grand Ballroom.

In another entry, we learn that “the Indianapolis Indians are a Pittsburgh Pirates AAA affiliate that somehow manages not to use a racist cartoon Indian on their hats (Cleveland take note).” For more on that subject, check out the Dish thread “Do Mascots Need Modernizing?” Another entry:

The contest photograph is packed with clues. I relied on minor league baseball stadiums (too small for major league, too big for little league or most universities) and a handy website listing all minor league stadiums. I started with those in Northern industrial states and it did not take long. Google Street views on the north side of Victory Field immediately included all the foreground clues in the contest photograph (red Indian teepee, street light post with no parking sign, brick perimeter fence column, trees, flag poles, memorial plague, etc.). The contest window had to be one of those directly across Maryland Street on the south face of the Marriott complex:

Many readers focused on another key element:

This started with a Google search for “minor league baseball stadium near coal power plant”, which found a nearly identical view:

A native weighs in:

I knew this picture instantly (even faster than the view from Monticello earlier this year). In the background is the former Indianapolis Power and Light (now Citizens Thermal Energy) power plant. Interestingly, the long diagonal structure used to haul coal to the boilers, but this facility was switched to natural gas a few years ago so the conveyer system is now obsolete. If you look at a map, you’ll notice a lot of railroad tracks behind Victory Field. I grew up just south of Indianapolis, and I spent a lot of time trainspotting at that location. I live in Berkeley, CA now; thanks for bringing back some really fond memories. I was in Indianapolis at exactly this time last year for the Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society convention, and stayed a couple of blocks away at the hotel in Union Station. That was the first time I’d seen the new blue Marriott tower from which this picture was taken. The blue glass accounts for the blue hue of the picture.

Another has a recommendation:

No useful trivia about the team or stadium, but I will say that the Indy 500 is a cultural event worth attending at least once before you die. Not for the race but for all the stuff that is associated with it. You have no idea how noisy a race is unless you are in the stands…

You have to appreciate the concision of this entry:

Logic?

1. U.S. ballpark.
2. Industrial city.
3. The flag is not a state flag.
4. It is not a major league ballpark (Google elimination of each one).
5. Aha! Maybe it’s a city flag.
6. Indianapolis.
7. Victory Field.
8. Marriott.

Another native:

I grew up in Indianapolis, and spent a number of cheap dates in high school and college going to see the Indianapolis Indians, a pretty good AAA baseball team. Back then, the Indians played in Bush Stadium, a charming old park built in 1931 and used to film the underrated Eight Men Out, where a couple of my buddies appear as extras in some crowd scenes.

A Pink Floyd connection:

Funny Story: I took my 3 daughters to a game there earlier this year. When my oldest (4 years old) saw the power plant to the south (which you can see in the picture) she asked if that’s where the animals live. If you remember Pink Floyd’s Animals album, the resemblance is striking.

As a serious Pink Floyd fan (my second daughter is named Vera), I almost fell over when she said it and it still makes me wonder why the hell she did.

Another former resident provides some context:

That is most certainly Indianapolis, IN, taken from the back side of the JW Marriott, looking over Maryland Street at Victory field. Without doing too much research, I’d bet it was taken out of one of the hallway windows that line the outside of the meeting rooms. I recognized this immediately. The old coal fired steam plant right behind victory field is a dead give away to anyone who has lived in the city, as is the Indianapolis city flag flying to the left of the stars and stripes.

Fun personal story here. I originally moved to Indianapolis 18 years ago. We moved here because my father had received a job at the Courtyard by Marriott that used to inhabit this same site, which was Howard Johnson’s before that. They renovated it to create more rooms and meeting space for the Super Bowl that was held in Indianapolis a few years back, adding a large curved blue tower that sits alone on the west edge of the downtown skyline (the JW Marriott hotel), and using the former tower of the Courtyard as a split unit between a Courtyard and a Spring Hill Suites.

Victory Field is one of the best Triple A parks in the country, and was designed by the same people who designed Camden Yards in Baltimore, MD. The design of Camden is responsible as the influence on many “throwback” modern ballparks across all levels of baseball.

This reader worries there are hard times ahead:

Let’s see, two weeks in a row now we’ve had views so easy they almost reach out of the screen, grab your lapels, and scream their addresses in your face. So I’m betting you’ll go the other direction next week and give us one that’s correspondingly hard. Something like this?

Even so, Chini will get it somehow.

And he can’t wait:

Man, you should have heard the stream of full on, raised-in-Staten Island-so-I-can-curse-in-seventeen-languages invectivery (yeah, invectivery) that came pouring forth after I loaded up this week’s image. At least I get the satisfaction of knowing that the Dish team might have spent their weekend wading through an even bigger pile of responses than those for last week’s Malibu Barbie of a view. And these easy shots are needed, I suppose, to bring new folks on-board.

This week’s winner is yet another long-winless veteran:

Perhaps to reward us for a long summer, but a bit of an easy one this week, especially with the flag and the Wikipedia entry on USA municipal flags. But perhaps most interesting was the obvious minor league ballpark with a teepee in it. (I wonder if Dan Snyder has thought of trying to put traditional Indian housing in FedEx field …) So a couple of Google searches brought me to the Indianapolis Indians and their Victory Field.

Here’s the reader who submitted the view:

I was elated to see my photo in the contest! After shouting over to my wife that this week’s contest had my photo, I suggested to her that it would probably not be fair for her to enter the contest. I should add that I’m a former winner from a couple of years ago, and that one of my views is actually in the book. In any case, this completely made my day.

The view shows a game in progress of the Indianapolis Indians at Victory Field. The photo was taken from the third floor of the JW Marriott hotel in Indianapolis. I’ve attached a street view showing the window from which I think I took the picture:

There really isn’t any room number, as the photo was taken from a lobby area in the hotel’s convention center. There’s a whole wall of windows overlooking the stadium, and in the street-view picture I gave my best estimate of the window from which the photo was taken. I can add that the flag on the left is that of the City of Indianapolis, of which Wikipedia helpfully points out that “A 2004 survey of flag design quality by the North American Vexillological Association ranked Indianapolis’s flag 8th best of 150 American city flags.

Next week will definitely be a lot harder, so if you’re up for the challenge, see you Saturday. In the meantime, here is this week’s guess collage – see if you can find your entry:

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

Is The Anti-ISIS Coalition Coalescing? Ctd

Ali Murat Yel defends Turkey’s reluctance to join the war coalition against ISIS:

Public opinion in Turkey holds that a Muslim cannot be a terrorist and any terrorist cannot be a Muslim. In other words, terrorism and Islam cannot be reconciled. This public conviction is certainly the real attitude of the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has formed the Alliance of Civilizations with Spain against the expectation in some quarters of a “clash of civilizations” and has been trying to restore peace with different ethnic groups in Turkey. The President himself and the majority of Turkish people believe that terrorism could be defeated intellectually not through waging war on them.

Turkish foreign policy has been formed on the principle of “zero problems with neighbors” because we believe that stability in the region would only bring more peace and wealth. … Instead of an external military operation the local politicians and people should come together and find their own solution according to their own realities and circumstances. Outsiders cannot understand all the local realities like the ethnic origins, sectarian divisions, or the political or ideological power structures of these peoples. Turkey, finally, does not want to be in the position of going to war in another, neighboring Muslim country.

Sanity! But we, thousands of miles away, know better. Amos Harel takes a look at the background role Israel is playing:

Despite the growing concern, it should not come as a surprise that the Netanyahu government has not yet taken any immediate steps against IS. The government has only announced that the organization would be considered illegal in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and decided to focus intelligence-gathering on the group’s activities in Syria and Lebanon. But while IS might not present an imminent threat at home, Netanyahu has been extremely eager to aid the Arab world in the battle against the group. Last week, the prime minister confirmed media reports that Israel was supplying intelligence to the new anti-IS international coalition. Jerusalem no doubt has useful information to contribute: For decades, it focused on acquiring first-rate intelligence about events in Syria, which it considered its toughest enemy.

Michael Crowley turns to Saudi Arabia, the linchpin of the coalition, and what King Abdullah al-Saud brings to the table:

While Saudi money has long helped nurture a fundamentalist Sunni doctrine that inspires groups from al Qaeda to Boko Haram, Islamic radicalism has come to threaten the king as well. … ISIS seems to have raised the king’s anxiety another notch, however. He has banned Saudis from traveling to join the fight in Syria, lest they return to threaten his regime. Last month Saudi authorities arrested dozens of suspects linked to ISIS — including members of an alleged cell plotting attacks within the country. But Abdullah wields a potent weapon in his defense: his influence over Saudi Arabia’s religious leaders. The king has a symbiotic relationship with his kingdom’s hardline clerics, whose words hold sway far across the Muslim world.

But Simon Henderson suspects that the Saudis will prefer to play both sides:

Despite the diplomacy of recent days, which suggests an emerging coalition that includes Saudi Arabia and will take on the fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and perhaps Syria, the House of Saud will likely continue to try to balance the threat of the head-chopping jihadists, while also trying to deliver a strategic setback to Iran by overthrowing the regime in Damascus. From a Saudi point of view, the move of IS forces into Iraq contributed to the removal of Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad, whom they regarded as a stooge of Tehran. Despite official support by Riyadh for the new Baghdad government, many Saudis who despise Shiites probably regard IS as doing God’s work.

Which is why this really is whack-a-mole. The administration, meanwhile, is engaging in linguistic contortions to explain how we’re not “coordinating” with Iran or Syria even if we’re talking to them and perhaps sharing intelligence:

“Coordinating means we talk directly to [the] Syrian Air Force and coordinate our attacks against ISIS with their operations against ISIS,” Christopher Harmer, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, told Foreign Policy, using one of the Islamic State’s acronyms. “That’s not happening, won’t happen.” But “deconflicting,” Harmer explained, means that the United States will monitor where the Syrian aircraft are flying and stay out of their way, thus avoiding any potential skirmishes. “That way we don’t accidentally intrude on their operations, or they on ours,” he said.

Harmer said the United States and Iran followed this protocol during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “The U.S. did not coordinate with Iran, but Iran definitely deconflicted their normal military operations to avoid any unwanted interaction with the U.S., particularly in the Persian Gulf,” he said. In that case, Harmer said, the Iranian Navy held back patrol boats that had often harassed U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz. “They backed way down off of their normal operations in order to deconflict with the U.S. operations,” Harmer said.

But Jacob Siegel rightly worries that Iran could become our shadow enemy in Syria:

As Iran showed in the last war in Iraq, when it armed and backed insurgent groups fighting U.S. forces, having a common enemy, as Saddam Hussein once was, won’t prevent Tehran from trying to counter American influence in the Middle East. For Iran, the question is what comes after ISIS. In Iraq there is already a Shia-led government in Baghdad broadly aligned with Tehran. But in Syria, where Shia are a minority, a post-ISIS future threatens to freeze Iran out.

To defeat ISIS, the U.S. is relying heavily on Sunni coalition partners to give its aims local legitimacy and ensure that constructing the post-ISIS political order won’t fall solely to America. Fearing the loss of its power, Iran could try to destabilize U.S.-led efforts in Syria, causing a protracted conflict that would weaken the allied participants. Alternately, if Tehran resigns itself to Assad’s ouster, it may seek other means to maintain its influence in Syria. One option would be controlling the political transfer of power from Assad, to ensure that the new government installed in Damascus remains receptive to Iranian interests. Then there’s the real long shot: that Iran reaches a détente with its Sunni rivals and accepts a power-sharing arrangement rather than a client state in Syria.

(Chart of Middle Eastern relationships via The Economist)

The Bill Factor

Ben Jacobs calls Bill Clinton’s speech “the most memorable moment” of the pro-Hillary event in Iowa:

Bill Clinton lit into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is facing a tough reelection bid in Kentucky. Clinton trotted out a new attack line, slamming McConnell for saying the worst day of his political career was when President George W. Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. “I was profoundly sad,” Clinton said of McConnell’s remarks. “When I look back on my life in politics, after all those decades and fights and all those campaigns, if the worst thing that ever happened to me was an attempt to limit black bag contributions?” Why not 9/11, the farm crisis, the loss of manufacturing jobs in the ’80s, or the loss of coal mining jobs in Kentucky? Clinton suggested.

He’s such a talented politician – and Hillary such an awkward one – that their joint appearances may well be a mixed blessing in their coming juggernaut back to power. Ira Stoll suspects that “Bill Clinton will surely find a way, once the midterm elections and the Democratic primary is over, to tone down the partisan leftism and reach out to more centrist and independent voters”:

As he confided to the Steak Fry audience, a secret of political message making is that “Without being dishonest, you want to appeal to as many people as you can.” After eight years of Obama, that may be a refreshing change. Or it may be that voters in 2016 feel the way they did back in 2008 — they’ve had enough of the Clintons and are ready for someone new.

But Chait questions Bubba’s political genius:

The idea that Bill Clinton possesses unique political talent has been disseminated both by Clinton and his enemies for years. It appeals to both of them, for different reasons. Conservatives are happy to attribute his success to Clinton’s mystical black magic, rather than to any shortcomings of their own agenda. And Clinton himself has every incentive to attribute the credit for his victories to his own unique skills, which just so happen to be available to his party once again if it returns the Clinton family to the top of the ticket. …

Clinton does give a good speech, and he does retain more pull than Barack Obama or most Democrats with marginal Democratic constituencies. He also follows politics closely. Beyond that, is there any actual reason to believe the story of Clinton as political impresario is anything more than a mutually convenient myth?

Chait takes a few well-deserved whacks at the press’s supine adoration of the guy, but I think he sells Clinton short. Clinton made the Democratic party electable again in 1992, and he won re-election handily. He gave the best speech at the 2012 Democratic Convention, in favor of Obama. He’s mesmerizing in person – so much so I recommend never getting near him. And I can’t help feeling that he still tends to over-shadow his wife in joint public appearances. He is a former president, after all, and the dynamics of a former president’s wife running for the presidency is a new thing in American politics (even though it has been common in some developing countries). Cassidy likewise views Bill as both a potential asset and liability:

Bill’s presence should help his wife at least somewhat. According to Jordan Ragusa, a data analyst at the Rule 22 blog, “when Bill’s approval rating increases by 1 unit, Hillary’s approval increases by just under 1/2 in the same direction.” I’m not sure how this finding can be reconciled with the recent sharp decline in Hillary’s numbers. But given the halo that now surrounds the late nineteen-nineties, a period of peace and prosperity, it only makes sense for Hillary’s campaign to remind voters of Bill. One of his adages from 1992 might go over better now than it did back then: when you elect a Clinton, you get “two for the price of one.”

The danger for Hillary’s campaign is that her husband’s presence becomes an unwelcome diversion—a story that some parts of the media are already running with.

And the beat goes on …

Scotland’s Independence Day Approaches, Ctd

Sam Wang examines the Scottish polls:

Thursday’s election will be extremely close, thanks to the elusive quality of political momentum. Shown above are the results of opinion surveys conducted in Scotland on this question. Each data point shows the median of 2 to 6 surveys, and the gray zone indicates the 1-sigma confidence band. The word “momentum” gets thrown around loosely in politics. To get back to its meaning in physics, one definition might be a change in opinion that looks like it will continue in the same direction. In that sense, “yes” has had the momentum.

Mark Gilbert expects that the way the referendum is phrased will impact the vote:

“There’s lots of experimental research showing that a strong positivity bias exists,” Andrew Colman, a psychology professor at the University of Leicester, said in response to e-mailed questions. “The ‘Better Together’ campaign, or perhaps the U.K. government, made a mistake allowing the ballot question to be as it is. It is obviously easier to campaign for ‘Yes, we can’ than ‘No, we can’t.’ If the U.K. government wanted to keep Scotland in the union, then the question should have been ‘Do you want Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom?'”

I’m finding all of this riveting. We’re talking about secession, after all, an option David Cameron insisted upon as a binary matter three overly-confident years ago. And yet a supra-nation has to have a binding identity to keep its constituent parts together. Britain was a vehicle for empire; that was its core purpose; and that purpose is no more. The deep cultural shifts in England that I detected even fifteen years ago have only gained momentum. And meaning matters – more, perhaps, than things like a stable currency or even economic growth. For a very long time, the English have alternately over-compensated for Scottish resentment – think of how many Scots have been prime ministers of Britain over the years – and yet also treated the place as a distant province.

I’m against secession, but I understand where the Scots are coming from. People want to be in charge their own destiny, be in control of their own future. If they no longer truly identify as British rather than as Scottish, then their future is effectively being determined by someone else – and it doesn’t help matters that Cameron is almost a text-book example of the kind of Englishman the Scots have always detested. This deep sense of identity matters in politics. Nations are mysterious things, wrapped up in human psychology. And what I’m seeing from this distance is an element of excitement for the future in Scotland that I haven’t seen before. I think that when such underlying shifts have already occurred, it is not unreasonable to adjust the political arrangements to accommodate them. Just read your Burke. And who doesn’t get a little thrill at the thought of Elizabeth, Queen of Scots?

Much more opinion and analysis below. Frum claims that Scottish independence is against America’s interests:

First, a ‘Yes’ vote would immediately deliver a shattering blow to the political and economic stability of a crucial American ally and global financial power. The day after a ‘Yes’ vote, the British political system would be plunged into a protracted, self-involved constitutional crisis. Britain’s ability to act effectively would be gravely impaired on every issue: ISIS, Ukraine, the weak economic recovery in the European Union.

Second, a ‘Yes’ vote would lead to a longer-term decline in Britain’s contribution to global security. The Scottish separatists have a 30-year history of hostility toward NATO. They abruptly reversed their position on the military alliance in 2012 to reassure wavering middle-of-the-road voters. But the sincerity of this referendum-eve conversion is doubtful. Even if it was authentic, the SNP’s continuing insistence on a nuclear weapons-free policy would lock U.S. and U.K. forces out of Scotland’s naval bases. The SNP’s instincts are often anti-American and pro-anybody-on-the-other-side of any quarrel with the United States, from Vladimir Putin to Hamas.

Larison pushes back on Frum:

[T]he “potential disaster” isn’t anything of the kind. The rest of the U.K., NATO, and the EU will continue to function just as well (or just as poorly) as ever. The U.K. was already being held back from a very activist foreign policy by its fiscal priorities and the public’s aversion to involvement in new foreign wars, so the separation of Scotland would have less of an effect than at almost any time in the last thirty years. Whatever problems NATO and the EU may have, including Scotland in these organizations won’t be a serious problem for either of them. NATO is already filled with small countries that don’t pull their weight. One more or less won’t make any difference. Both organizations may make it difficult for Scotland to join for individual members’ own reasons, but in that case Scotland wouldn’t be contributing to their dysfunction for years to come.

Noah Millman mulls Scottish nationalism:

In a multi-cultural age, nationalism makes sense as a response to collective oppression, which Scotland does not suffer from, and/or some sense of profound and unbridgeable difference, which Scotland does not really manifest. Nationalism as an ideal in itself, as a way for a people to establish itself as a force in the world, romantically actualizing their ethno-historical essence, frog-marching their people into modernity and/or purifying themselves of foreign influences – all elements of nationalism when it mattered for Germany, or Italy, or China, or Japan, or Egypt, or Israel – is more than slightly alarming to contemporary cosmopolitans. But on that score Scottish nationalism doesn’t look much like nationalism at all. And, okay, maybe it’s just more practical for New Zealand not to be governed from the other side of the world. But is Scotland really “necessary” or “inevitable” in that sense? Not really. So why vote yes? Isn’t it setting the requirements for divorce rather low?

Bloomberg View’s editors encourage Scotland to stay:

[W]hat problem, exactly, is independence supposed to fix? In a sense, Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond and his supporters have already won the battles that count. Scotland already sets its own course in education, offering free university tuition compared with the 9,000 pounds a year payable in England, and in health care withfree medical prescriptions (which the English help to pay for). Moreover, the U.K. government is clambering to devolve more tax and spending powers, both in response to the independence movement and as part of a wider acknowledgment that more decentralization is desirable.

With the momentum toward devolution likely to accelerate, Scotland is in a position to gain control of its fiscal affairs without abandoning a relationship that has worked well for more than three centuries. Its politicians could tailor economic and social policies to suit local needs without the potentially disastrous distractions of balancing the books, managing its heightened dependence on oil, and seeking membership of an EU that is wary of setting a precedent for Spain’s Catalonia and other discontented regions.

Matthew Dal Santo has related concerns about independence:

It’s not fear that’s clouding the referendum debate; it’s amnesia about the scale of the union’s achievements and the inter-dependence of the British peoples. After 1707, Scots and English (and Welsh) invented Britishness together. It’s entirely within their creative capacity to reshape its content for the 21st century.

Larison calls out a double-standard:

Western policymakers and pundits are normally too enamored of the benefits of partition, secession, and the creation of new states when it applies to states that they don’t like or that they view as intractable problems. Iraq isn’t stable? Maybe we should split it up into sectarian and ethnic enclaves, regardless of what the people living there might want. Sudan suffers from a protracted civil war? Let’s create a new, automatically failed state as part of the “solution.” Ukraine is politically divided and dysfunctional? Maybe we should cut it in half! Over the last few months, advocating for an independent Kurdistan has suddenly become popular again, as if that weren’t potentially very dangerous and explosive for the entire region. But when there is a popular movement to establish a new state peacefully and it affects a Western country that they know well, it suddenly seems mystifying and bizarre. “Why would anyone want to do that?” they ask. Self-determination and national independence are supposed to be what nations somewhere else want. People living in modern Western democracies are supposed to have outgrown that sort of thing.

And Emile Simpson is upset that the rest of Britain doesn’t get a vote:

[T]o have no voice feels culturally unjust. Not just for many of those among the 830,000 people born in Scotland who now live elsewhere in the United Kingdom (and thus can’t vote), but for many British citizens who feel that Scotland is inseparably intertwined with their broader cultural identity. Both my grandfather’s name (Simpson) and my grandmother’s maiden name (McDougall) are Scottish. My family can trace some of our Scottish ancestors back to the 19th century, and I take pride in that.

Scottish nationalists will say, “That doesn’t make you Scottish.” That is true in my case — I don’t identify as Scottish; I identify primarily as British — but it is also banal. What I resent in that argument is being forced out of claiming as my primary civic identity an open-facing and inclusive “British” identity, which incorporates and celebrates the diversity of sub-national character and origins within the United Kingdom. There are countless families whose roots and cultural heritage span far beneath the border; cutting the family tree’s roots in two will cause many of them huge cultural pain in a visceral, human sense.

Previous Dish on Scotland here.

Dissents Of The Day I

A reader succinctly sums up a common sentiment in the in-tray:

Give the president some time and see how this works out. I can’t believe that after six years of meep meep, you keep freaking out like this.

Another adds, “Is it too much of a cliché to say Keep Calm and Know Hope?” Another:

Really disappointed in your attacks on Obama. So far, his actions against IS(IS) have been quite successful. Most of the Yazidis are off the mountain and receiving food and medicine rather than a horrible death, the same for the Shia community of Amerli. IS’s march towards the Kurdish capital of Irbil, a rare success story in the region, has been stopped. IS have lost control of the Mosul Dam, which controls the region’s water and electricity supply and if destroyed would unleash a tsunami over a huge area. Maliki’s been replaced in Iraq. All this without generating any real outrage against America.

Some of the rhetoric about destroying IS may be way unrealistic, but I think his actions have been careful and effective. I think Obama will stall and partially reverse what was an alarmingly rapid expansion of this frightening group, and at an acceptable price ensure the Middle East becomes a little less awful in a situation when doing nothing would see it become a lot more awful. Doesn’t that deserve our support?

Another reader:

As for “war,” calm down. We’re going for containment. ISIL is not ten feet tall, they’ve lost repeatedly when faced by peshmerga or Iraqi forces backed by US air power. If Mr. Obama really meant to obliterate ISIL, we’d be talking Marines, not air power supporting the locals. So this is containment to be followed we hope by ISIL making a hash of things in their territory and eventually being nibbled to death by Baghdad and the Kurds and Assad and even the Free Syrian Army. Al-Baghdadi’s only possible winning move is against Mecca and Medina, and if we block that effectively, he’ll wither over time. If ISIL attacks the US or Europe we have their home address and we have lots of bombs. None of this is good, but neither is it time to panic.

Mr. Obama played a bad hand about as well as it could be played.

Another switches metaphors:

As always, I think we underestimate Obama when it comes to playing foreign policy chess. Remember how it looked like Syria was an utter disaster for him a year ago?

But he achieved his objective, near complete destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons. I think his long game in the current situation is this: continue a punishing air campaign against ISIL while ramping up intelligence to thwart more videos of Americans being murdered and prodding reluctant allies to step up. In two months (the extent of his authority, according to the War Powers Act and after the elections), he’ll go to Congress for further authorization. Then the hot potato is in their laps. They can’t punt it then – the whole country will be watching. If the allies have started to roll ISIL back, the chorus for further escalation might be defeated. If they haven’t, it still might – a lot of Republicans AND Democrats resent our having to clean up other country’s messes alone.

But much more importantly, the decision won’t be made by an imperial president. It will be made by the recently elected representatives of the people – and that, I think, is Obama’s real objective.

Another references our most recent Email of the Day:

“My gut reaction was that this wasn’t the guy I voted for – what happened to that guy?” What is it about Americans that they constantly delude themselves that the Candidate is ever going to bear any relation to the Office-holder? When junior Senator Barack Obama was running for President in 2008, he had no access to classified information, comparatively little information about the world beyond the borders, and absolutely no information whatsoever about the nature of the threat or of other national security interests in the REAL WORLD. Which is why, incidentally, Mitt Romney quit talking about Benghazi after he was officially the Republican nominee – because if you were reading the papers, you read that the day AFTER the Republican convention ended he got his first, albeit limited, classified intelligence briefing.

The President of the United States is not, cannot be, and should not be expected to be, the “same guy” as the candidate for the office of President of the United States. Get over it already.

Another questions the idea that the president should have a set strategy on ISIS:

Isn’t it possible that the reason Obama did not give a long-range detailed plan for how to deal with ISIL is that he has learned that war in the Middle East is very fluid and constantly changing? If so, then he is the smartest one in the room, because he is not predicting anything. He is taking an action (which will have a military effect on ISIL) while basically saying, “Let’s see what’s going on in six months before we choose our next step.” Maybe the Iraqi government will be more solid; maybe the Kurdish troops will be better trained; maybe our relationship with Iran will be stronger because of a mutual enemy … who knows what will be. Obama is taking his usual centrist approach and saying let’s see what’s happening later before we decide our next step.

Or as another puts it:

Obama’s proposed path occupies a more flexible, middle ground between the extremes of the neocon’s “shock and awe,” total-war argument and your new “do nothing,” burn-and-rebuild position.

Another round of dissents coming soon.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)